The World Of Urban Gardening

At 1800 Roanoke Avenue there’s a building that houses Hope for the Inner City, a local Christian non-profit group. It’s a drab building. A row of abandoned brick buildings next door has a “for rent” sign posted near the sidewalk. A train yard is down the road. A sign in the front yard of Hope for the Inner City offers discounted dental services.

The place is surrounded by a high chain link fence, as are most things on that side of town. Car horns, diesel trucks and emergency vehicle sirens never end from Amnicola highway a couple blocks away. The general advice given when visiting this East Chattanooga neighborhood is to keep your doors locked and don’t get caught there after dark.

A vast, unkempt and colorless field is across the street. The Harriet Tubman housing projects once stood at this site but were torn down by the city in 2014. Though a lot of money has changed hands over the place, a lot of governmental talk is the only thing that has replaced the homes.

A $100,000 Tennessee state grant, to be matched by an equal amount of money from the city of Chattanooga, was recently awarded to be put towards the future use of the empty lot. The Chattanooga Times-Free Press reported in March 2018 that this money will be spent on projects such as a wetland study and an archaeological review. There is a possibility that archaeologists will dig up some broken glass or a few rusted vegetable cans left over from the 440 homes that used to be there.

The same article states that the city of Chattanooga has put more than $7.1 million dollars into the empty field since 2014, yet what will finally become of the 36 acres has still not been decided. In hopes of rejuvenating the neighborhood, converting the land into an industrial site seems to be the city’s prevailing hope.

WRCB-TV reported City Councilman Yusuf Hakeem stating, in defense of the demolition of the homes, that “We really believe that if we put some employment there—a business—that it would attract a grocery store.”

While the archaeological digs and vast sums of money are still being sorted out, a person will occasionally walk down the 1800 block of Roanoke Avenue. These people are generally unrecognizable and going nowhere. But if while passing by they look behind the drab building that houses Hope for the Inner City, they will see a bright garden.

The message of Hope for the Inner City states that “...we are not simply committed to the perpetual feeding and clothing of those around us, but to equipping them with skills that create the self-worth and self-sufficiency that can change the lives of men, women and children for generations to come.” One of the biggest strategies being used to accomplish this goal is Hope for the Inner City’s Grow Hope initiative.

On their website Hope for the Inner City states that: “The Grow Hope urban agriculture initiative is our way of growing food in an urban environment. But it is much more than that: urban agriculture is a way for people to reclaim their connections to nature, to the act of eating, and to each other through the act of growing food, all without leaving the city. It’s also a movement through which people are gaining independence from the current industrial food system.”

In simpler terms, it’s an urban community garden. It is being led by a man named Joel Tippens.I had my 10-year-old daughter Ava with me when I decided to visit Mr. Tippens one Saturday morning. She’s going to be a news reporter one day, she says, and she came along with bright eyes and a notebook and pen. Her job was to see everything and take notes.

The first thing one notices about Joel Tippens is that he has a speaking voice like Tommy Chong. Mr. Tippens looks like an urban gardener. He is middle-aged and wore a pair of shorts and sandals this August morning. The bottom of his legs and feet looked like he had just finished mowing wet grass. A small scratch bled on his right ankle, but he didn’t seem to notice.

I introduced myself, shook his hand and apologized for interrupting his day. He reassured me that it was no problem at all—as long as I was there he wouldn’t have to work. I silently forgave Mr. Tippens for this remark and he found some chairs for Ava and I to sit on. He pulled one up for himself and we sat down at the Grow Hope gardens to talk.

And the man can talk. Despite his unassuming air, Mr. Tippens has an encyclopedic knowledge of gardening and food cultivation. He is a whirlwind of information. He knows what to plant, where and when. He knows how much rainfall to expect. He knows how much he can expect to yield from his plants and how many people they can feed. He told us which plants are native to the area and which ones travelled here from other places. I looked hopefully over at my note-taker and she was listening wide-eyed. She couldn’t write fast enough.

More impressive was Joel’s knowledge of the demographics of this east side neighborhood. He knows the history of the area and how local residents hope to see it grow. He talked about the neighborhood’s average household income and how much they were able to spend on food. He went on and on with an overwhelming amount of knowledge that I quickly learned was more than I had the knowledge to fully appreciate. A garden to me was a couple tomato plants. I had to interrupt him and tell him so.

“Well, we offer classes,” Joel said. He looked at Ava. “Do you like okra?”

Walking us further into his garden he told us about Father Peter, a local Episcopal priest who came here from Kenya.

Joel was quiet for a moment. Then he told us how this African priest has set up his own urban garden. Joel has given him plants and helped him find a place to begin growing. Father Peter’s place is called Taking Root Garden and is set up in an empty parking lot on Main Street. His focus is on feeding immigrant families newly arriving in Chattanooga.

“These people come here,” Joel explained, “and they’re used to growing their own food. They don’t have supermarkets where they come from. They come here with nothing. Nowhere to go, strangers in a strange land, and one of the first things they do is start looking for somewhere to grow their food. Father Peter is giving them that.”

We stopped before several tall rows of flowering green. “Here’s our okra,” he said. “They’re related to hibiscus. You ever seen those big hibiscus flowers?” Joel held a white okra bloom in his fingers. “They look a lot like these.” He broke off a fresh piece of okra growing beneath the flower and began eating it.

And the fascinating thing about okra is how it came here, he continued. “African women hid the seeds in their hair when they came over on slave ships. They knew where they were going. They knew what was happening. And they brought these seeds with them. They hoped to be able to grow their own food again one day.” Joel knelt to pull some weeds from around the bottom of the okra.

I remarked how it was fascinating that so many of these urban gardens popping up have been begun by religious organizations. There was one I knew of at a church on Brainerd Road. I mentioned another garden a friend had told me about led by a local Islamic group. They grow food the same as Grow Hope and distribute it to the community in another part of town.

Joel dismissed my interest in this. He shrugged it off like that notion should be self-explanatory. “Food is health,” he said and stood back up. “Food is culture and it’s memories. People don’t realize how much is tied to the things we eat. And the way we eat and the way we provide for ourselves. It’s everything. You can buy a can of vegetables from a grocery store for a little change, but is it worth everything that gets lost?”

I mentioned the idea Councilman Hakeem had that a new industrial park in the pasture across the road might bring a grocery store to the area. But Joel didn’t let me get too far with that idea. “They might build a Sav-A-Lot,” he said. “Maybe a Dollar Store. Have you ever bought food in one of those places? There’s better ways to use that land.”

At this Joel insisted that Ava and I take home some food. He had to get back to work. Before we left he handed me a dozen eggs from the chickens they raised. He gave Ava a paper bag filled with okra and red peppers from the garden and we said goodbye.

Driving back down the road that afternoon my daughter started eating the raw okra from the bag. She said it tasted like honeysuckle. I told her if she was going to be a news reporter she shouldn’t try to trick people. I knew that slime called okra that came out of a can. Ava laughed and told me to check the facts and handed me a piece of okra.

It was true. Raw okra tastes like honeysuckle. It has that honeysuckle taste without the sweetness. Honeysuckle tastes like you’ve breathed it in and has the magical ability to send you immediately into nostalgia.

For a moment I was no longer driving through East Chattanooga with my child but was a child again myself, alone and walking an old fence row in the woods picking those white and yellow flowers. Pulling the stem out very gently to get that tiny drop of the sweet tasting elixir of childhood. What a strange bite of okra, I thought.

I wondered what today’s descendants of the women who hid those okra seeds in their hair think when they taste this strange fruit? Do they go back to days of youth, too? Or way back earlier than Harriet Tubman and the projects? Before people and homes were bought and sold and torn down? When people were allowed to provide for themselves? These are the things Grow Hope is trying to restore.

I thought of the Harriet Tubman homes being demolished to make way for an industrial park and the bizarre statement that such a thing might attract a grocery store. I thought of an old Billie Holiday song, too, and figured I had better stop thinking.

I looked over at Ava. She was in full-tilt, ten-year-old prime of her youth, laughing and riding with her daddy. She had started in on one of the red bell peppers in the paper bag and watched East Chattanooga pass by her window. I hoped this Saturday afternoon would be what the taste of honeysuckle and raw okra brought her back to one day. And I decided we need to grow our own. We’d go back and let Grow Hope teach us how.

Chattanooga resident Cody Maxwell is a longtime contributing writer for The Pulse and is the author of Chattanooga Chronicles and 16 Cantos. Reach him at codymaxwell@live.com